I'm currently trying to put together a Powerpoint presentation (using the Open Office equivalent) about One Laptop Per Child. This is for a college assignment tomorrow. I've never used software like this before and I'm pulling my hair out. I have all the slides, too many actually, but I'd like to be able to format the text across the whole presentaton, every slide. Anyone know how I go about doing that? Do I have to do it on each individual or is there a shrtcut to apply it to the whole slideshow?

Well, as I do hate slideshow/presentaiton programs I'm probably not best suited to answer.

However, as a user of Microsoft Office since 95 (yes I was 4, and yes I did wait outside at midnight for Windows 95 and Office 95 - Hardcore!) I can say that I've never seen any options for formatting the ENTIRE document in any of the applications.

ALTHOUGH

I do know that MS Office allows custom micro applications or "Macros" to be created in the coding language Visual Basic. I wouldn't know how to create a macro to do what you are asking, but perhaps others on the internet have solved this problem for MS Office, also note that Macros should be backwards / forwards compatible wth any version of MS Office.

As for Open Office - I've used it, but never really spent more than an hour or so with it, and none of that time was spent with the Presentation side of things. Although I would imagine that it would have some sort of Plug-In support for additional user created features.

My Personal preference is to code them in XHTML/CSS/JavaScript - Allows the change of formatting and style accross entire XHTML pages in one file; obviously a tad complex for a standard presentation, but is probably more effective.

Anyway, sorry I couldn't be of more help, but hopefully Open Office supports plug-in's of some sort.

Yeah, I wanted the whole thing to look uniform. It's no matter. I've went in and edited every slide individually. Phew! I hate doing this kind of thing.

What's worse is that tomorrow I need to do a 15 minute talk on the topic. I don't stand in front of people and talk, not that kind of guy. To say I'm dreading it would be an understatement.

What really bugs me is that this particular class (Working Within a Project Team) has no connection with my actual course subject - HNC in Computing. It's merely there to teach the younger students how to get along in the real world. A noble cause for sure but I'm 42! I know how to get along. Having said that, I am back at school in my forties so maybe I'm not [/i]that good at the real world

Thanks guys for trying to help. I'm off to bed now, not that I'll sleep of course. I hate going to bed after I've been staring at the monitors all night.

Here is the answer to your question, at least what I understood you wanted. I don't know if this works for Open Office but it is the way it is done in MS Power Point.

Use the slide master to change the font throughout the presentation

If you're using one slide master (slide master: The slide that stores information about the design template applied, including font styles, placeholder sizes and positions, background design, and color schemes.), you can change a font style on the master and the change is reflected throughout the presentation. If you are using multiple slide masters (such as when you have applied more than one design template (design template: A file that contains the styles in a presentation, including the type and size of bullets and fonts; placeholder sizes and positions; background design and fill color schemes; and a slide master and optional title master.) to your presentation), you must change the font style on each master.

On the View menu, point to Master, and then click Slide Master.
In master view, thumbnails of each slide master (in pairs that include a title master (title master: The slide that stores information from the design template pertaining to styles on title slides, including placeholder sizes and positions, background design, and color schemes.) for each) appear to the left of the Slides tab.

If you are using multiple masters, select the slide master thumbnail or title master thumbnail whose font style you want to change.
On the slide, click the title text or the level of body text to which you want to apply a new font style.
(Remember, on the master, you are only changing the font, not the text.)

I hope this is useful to you next time. There is always a next time Let us know how was your presentation anyways.

Thanks for that Camut. Your advice is definitely accurate in MS Powerpoint but it seems OO doesn't have that feature. Shame. Never mind. I passed anyway though I find standing up in front of an audience incredibly difficult but my wife gave me some magic pills she got for a speech she had to do a year ago and they definitely helped.

I may be a bit late, but pressing F11 should bring up the Styles list, even in Openoffice.org Impress.
If you don't know how to work with those, a quick google search should spill out lots of information about that.

Styles are the proper way to format your documents. In Openoffice.org, you can use them in all the apps, maybe except for Draw. Oh yeah, numbering does really suck sometimes in 2.3, but it might be the thick me